Must We Talk About Our Relationship?

Routinely I ask couples who come to see me with marriage issues what they talk about with each other at home. The most common answers are:

• children
• money
• work
• in-laws
• sports
• trips & vacations

Can you guess what’s the last thing to get talked about? What’s the most overlooked topic of conversation? What’s often anxiety-producing and therefore avoided? You got it…their relationship with each other!

Do they have to talk about it? Absolutely! If we want our relationship to be vital and durable, we have to take care of it. We do that by being mindful of it, noticing when it’s happy and when it’s not, and being attentive to it. Notice I’m referring to our relationship as though it’s a living, breathing entity…and it is. In every marriage (or any other significant union) there are three distinct entities: the two partners and the relationship. The two partners each contribute to the creation of the relationship; therefore when things go well in the relationship they have themselves to congratulate…and when things don’t go well they both have responsibility for that outcome. This is why, when there is trouble in the marriage, responsibility for it rests on both the partners.

Have you ever noticed how you’ll get up in the morning, prepare to leave for work, and then get in your car and drive to the office without any thought to how your car is running? You just get in the car and drive, right? Do you ever find yourself wondering, “how much tread is left on my tires?”… or “how close am I to 50,000 mile service?” Most of the time, unless the car is really running poorly, we simply take the car for granted and are content that it gets us to our destinations. I think we function the same way with many of our relationships; unless they are painful and dysfunctional, we tend to be rather mindless and take them for granted, not thinking much about them, just going along and “living life”. It’s not a mean-spirited sort of attitude, but rather a benign sort of taking-for-granted.

Thinking along these lines I’m also reminded of the annual performance reviews at work. Personally, I found these reviews very easy to put off. As a Supervisor in our Township, I was responsible for organizing these interviews, and the feedback went both ways; both from me and from the employee. We were tasked to talk about both quality of work product and quality of relationships among the staff. It was a difficult conversation much of the time, personal and meaningful. The conversation set the tone for the upcoming year, and processed how the previous year had flowed. When the reviews were over, we were all glad we found the energy to have the conversations, glad there was now clarity where previously there was uncertainty, and relieved to have matters that needed to be discussed out in the open and resolved. Basically, these were talks about performance, but also about our relationships – relationships at work – and in hindsight everyone recognized they were absolutely necessary for optimal functioning in the work environment. But have no doubts about it, these were tough interactions, and we had to undertake them quite intentionally.

Why is it so important for partners to talk about their relationship? Because if they don’t, they run the risk of simply living life but not examining themselves in the process. Doing so allows us the opportunity to make “mid-course adjustments in our flight paths”. We need to ask the questions:

• “are we both happy in our relationship?”
• “what things would you and I like to change about our relationship?”
• “where do we see our relationship is headed?”
• “do we have enough significant conversations, fun activities, spirituality, addressing and solving of problems, time away from each other and on our own with friends, etc., in our relationship?”

So, focus on building conversation about the relationship into your important relationships, and make it a part of your routine dialogue. I think you’ll be surprised how both dynamic and creative doing so will make your relationships!